


What I Wouldn't Do

by MarisaKateBella



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Maggie and Daryl have a chat, but happy too, idk - Freeform, it's kind of adorable, this is actually kinda sad?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarisaKateBella/pseuds/MarisaKateBella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short drabble. Maggie and Daryl have a heart-to-heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I Wouldn't Do

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble.
> 
> Please, read and enjoy!

 

It was quiet, other than the sounds of a few rattling breaths and a couple harsh coughs. Glenn was finally sleeping serenely, with his mouth hanging open and drooling on the pillow, much in the same way he had last winter when he’d come down with that cold. Maggie smiled to herself at the memory.  He’d been so adamant about not being sick. He had eventually collapsed one day, and Hershel had put his foot down about staying in one place while he recovered. Rick hadn’t been too happy about that, pacing round and round the little shack they’d found like an angry wolf.

Lori had been alive then…and T-Dog.

Maggie sighed and ran her hand over the top of Glenn’s oil-colored hair. He shifted slightly in his sleep but didn’t move any more, peaceful for once. She was pretty sure she could set off a gun near his head right now and Glenn wouldn’t budge. She understood, though. The longing for sleep weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she was determined to stay awake and watch the medicine put color back in her husband’s cheeks.

There was the sound of footsteps on the catwalk and Maggie looked over her shoulder to see Tyreese in the doorway. She gave him a tight-lipped smile.

“You should get some rest,” he said, coming further into the cell.

Maggie denied him a response and went back to running her fingers through Glenn’s hair.

“At least go outside for a minute, you need some fresh air. I’ll watch him, Sasha’s been out for a while, but she’s looking better. So’s he.” Tyreese’s lips twitched upwards but it was only a phantom smile. “He’s not going anywhere. I got ‘im.”

Maggie looked back and forth between her husband and Tyreese, who was watching her with worried eyes. Finally, she sighed and picked up Glenn’s hand. His fingers curled around hers in his sleep; they were clammy but not too cold or hot. She kissed his knuckles and then pressed them to her cheek for a moment. She stood up from Glenn’s bed and squeezed Tyreese’s muscled shoulder as she passed. He covered her small hand with his large, warm one. The look in his eyes was worried…exactly what she’d expect if looked in a mirror.

As soon as she was out of the cell block her lungs filled with the cool, crisp nighttime air. She hadn’t realized exactly how much the sickness had hung in the atmosphere of A block. She took her time as she made her way through the labyrinth of the prison. Night was the best time to think here, when everyone else was asleep and no one asked her why she was pacing. She never used to be a worrier. She was pretty sure she used to not even know what anxiety felt like. Now, it always sat, huddled against the base of her spine, churning at all hours of the day.

It was the worst at night.

It was the worst it had been since Hershel.

Since Judith.

Beth was healthy, that was good. And Hershel hadn’t shown any symptoms of the flu, which was a blessing. Judith was safe; most of their people were well and accounted for…except Carol.

God, _Carol_.

“ _She killed Karen and David._ ” Rick’s words echoed in her delirious, sleep-deprived thoughts. “ _Don’t tell anyone yet._ ”

Maggie found herself opening the main door that led onto the blacktop outside. She breathed in the air, glad that it wasn’t as humid today as it had been the past week. Collapsing at one of the various tables spread out around the courtyard, she buried her head in her arms, which were resting on top of the table, and allowed the tears she’d been holding back to spill.

She had only meant to cry for a moment, let the tears that were collecting like a pressure valve escape and be done with it, but, her body had other plans. By the time her last few tears were leaking from her eyes the forearms of her red shirt were soaked with big, dark splotches. Maggie sighed and wiped her nose, letting her forehead rest on the cool metal of the table. Over the chorus of dead voices, ravenous against the fences, Maggie could make out the thud of boots scraping against the blacktop. They sounded even and had none of the skip-drag pattern of a Walker. The acrid smell of cigarette smoke preceded whoever had found her. After a few more paces the footsteps faded and Maggie lifted her head, thinking her company had turned and left after seeing her.

“He a’right?”

Maggie turned around on the bench to look at Daryl, who was standing behind her and off to the side a few feet, looking down at the ground. She could see the cherry of a cigarette poking from between his lips in the dark.

“He’s sleepin’, but he’ll—he’ll be okay.” Maggie inconspicuously tried to wipe the rest of the tears from her eyes before they reflected on her face in the moonlight.

Daryl looked up at the sound of her moving and nodded his head once.

She couldn’t see his eyes but knew that he was watching her in that quiet, intense way of his. She gave him a wobbly, probably extremely unconvincing, smile.

Daryl came and sat down on the bench next to her, falling heavily as if he weighed a hundred times more than he did. Maggie felt the vibrations in her gut. Daryl spread his legs wide and rested his elbows on his knees, letting his hands hang. He took a drag of his cigarette before letting his hand drop back down. There was a long moment where he sat there, not breathing, with Maggie watching worriedly.

Finally, he let the air leave his lungs; the grey smoke was whisked away by the wind almost as soon as it escaped his mouth. Maggie noticed that he’d sat downwind of her. She looked at her own hands, folded in her lap before sighing herself and scooting closer to Daryl. They weren’t touching but it was the closest she’d been to him since the day Judith was born. She lifted her hand slowly, as one might when greeting an unfamiliar dog. Daryl was not unfamiliar, but she remembered the scars on his back and the way his whole body had tensed when she’d wrapped her arms around his torso, pressing her face against his back to shield herself from the wind on the motorcycle.

Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulder. Immediately, the muscles shuddered like a frightened colt. She brushed her thumb over the leather and down onto his bare arm. It only took a few strokes before he settled under her touch. “Thank you,” she whispered, letting the choked tone speak for itself. She squeezed his shoulder gently before sliding away from him. The absence of the warmth that radiated from him was noticeable. She shivered slightly.

Daryl dropped his cigarette and crushed it beneath the toe of his boot. He was quiet for so long that she thought he may not have heard her. “Don’t gotta thank me,” he said with that strained reluctance that was always in his voice when someone gave him praise.

It broke Maggie’s heart; she hoped it didn’t show on her face. She’d never want Daryl to think that she pitied him. “Yes, I do. Without you, Glenn could’ve—he probably would’ve died. Sasha. So many others, too. You saved ‘em, Daryl. _You_.”

“And Michonne. And Bob. And Tyreese,” Daryl listed off, his tone biting. He shifted away from her slightly.

“You organized them. You decided that one hundred miles was nothin’ compared to the lives of our people…my husband. I know you’re the one who got that van workin’, Michonne ain’t a  mechanic. You were always fiddlin’ with our cars over the winter. Fixin’ the cars, huntin’ for us, givin’ your meals to Lori—“

Daryl flinched visibly, a quick tension in his shoulders while his hands curled into fists. “Lotta good it did her.”

“Fuckin’ stop it!” Maggie snapped.

Daryl actually turned and looked over at her, even though neither of them could see each other’s faces very well. She imagined that his expression, behind the shadow that his shaggy hair cast over it, was probably a bit shocked that she’d yelled at him. To be honest, she was a little surprised herself. She wasn’t afraid of Daryl; Maggie was under no delusions about the man’s true spirit, no matter what kind of bullshit came out of his mouth. Yet, she had been raised never to lift her voice at her elders, and there was no getting around the fact that this man was easily fifteen years older than she. And she had cursed at him. Her father would have a heart attack if he knew.

“I’m—sorry,” Maggie started, “I didn’t mean—oh, what the hell—yes, I did!” Maggie was watching Daryl for any signs of reaction to her outbursts; but he seemed calm, impassive almost. It only incited her more. “You don’t getta shrug off what you’ve done for everyone in this godforsaken prison. Take responsibility for your actions.”

Daryl snorted. “I ain’t done nothin’ someone else wouldn’t do.”

Maggie deflated, her own shoulders slumping as she rested her elbow on the table behind them and cradled her head in her hand, watching Daryl curiously. “We both know that ain’t true.”

He’d looked away from her again, staring out across the quad to the brick wall a few yards in front of them.

“Why, Daryl?” she asked, quiet but genuinely curious.

He surprised her by reaching out and placing his heavy hand on her leg. He squeezed the muscle on top of her thigh gently before letting his hand slip away again. “Y’all’re the only family I got left.”

Maggie felt the thickness of tears begin to coat her throat and she swallowed harshly, chewing on the inside of her cheek for a moment.

Apparently, that was too long for Daryl because he stood, rather abruptly. She thought he would just take off, as he always did when things got too emotional, but he turned back to her at the last second, as if he was culling the reaction himself. “Tell Short Round I’m gonna kick his ass when he gets better. Fucker’s gotta stop bein’ such a pansy.”

Maggie laughed slightly, it probably sounded slightly delirious, and definitely forced out by surprise. “I’ll let him know.”

Daryl nodded, bringing his hand up to his mouth and chewing on his thumb before turning on his heel and beginning to walk away.

“Oh, and, Daryl?” Maggie called gently.

He stopped, but didn’t turn around. He was almost completely in the shadow of the cell block. The moonlight glinted off the top of his crossbow.

“We love you, too.”

There was a long beat of silence, where even the walkers seemed to have let the words soothe them as she hoped they soothed the man who’d saved them all. She didn’t expect him to say anything to her so when his: “Night, Maggie,” drifted over to her, she smiled.

A few moments later the clag of the prison door opening and closing could be heard, leaving Maggie alone in the cool night air, feeling lighter than she had any right to.


End file.
